


Dumb Animals

by Teaotter



Category: Rosemary Kirstein - the Steerswoman series
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Ellen Fremedon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 18:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is Bladegrass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dumb Animals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellen_fremedon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/gifts).



> Many thanks to Kate_Nepveu for reading a draft on short notice. Your comments were greatly appreciated!
> 
> This story contains spoilers for _The Lost Steersman_ and almost certainly won't make sense unless you've read it.

Her name is Bladegrass. She remembers this, over and over again as she passes her fingers over the bladegrass along the path. Bladegrass; bladegrass. The edges of the grass are sharp, the leaves long and thin. The word (and she knows that word, better than any other, the word Mother gave her before she could even understand that it was a word) -- the word is also long and thin, almost flat like the leaves, but it is not sharp at all, and it curls just a little along one edge.

She could make it now, that word, her word, but there's no one here to read it and no point in making it for herself as long as she can remember. And she does remember, that word, and the word for name (which is pointy in a different way, a pyramid with one side smaller than the others so it sits flat on its bottom like a rock but points to the sky like a person). The two words together mean her, Bladegrass, and she could make them both here, now, but she doesn't have to as long as she remembers.

There are lots of words she could make. She's a Speaker, and even though she's young (and she can make that word, too, the word for child, such a soft word, like an egg, but lighter) -- she knows them all. All the words, all the words, for sun and wind and rock and water and home and mother and running and remembering. All the words that anyone in Three-Streams-Town knows, and some that the strangers brought with them when they were fleeing the Destroyer.

The Destroyer. Bladegrass stops walking and squats on the ground, hugging her arms around herself. Those words were hard; Mother forgot herself and ate one of the strangers, the words were so hard. Whole towns, gone, and all the people dead. Only half-made words and smoke left behind them. The Destroyer didn't even eat them. She shakes and hugs herself harder.

There are no words for the feelings that move inside her. Sometimes, she sits in town and shakes so hard with the wanting to say, but she doesn't know the words. Sometimes, she comes out here where no one comes and tries to find the words she needs to tell them... She's not sure what she wants to tell them, just that there is something she feels, something dull and empty as the sky, as vague as the shapes of the world when she's alone, deeper than any hole she's ever found.

She tries again to imagine the shape of the word, getting to her feet and starting down the path again without thinking. She is tasting everything she can find today, sliding her fingers across their shapes, stuffing them into her mouth for the details of texture and the lovely, lovely taste of them: the four-winged moths, the creepinggrass, the musty earth at the foot of a thorntower.

Words are difficult. Words have to be enough like the thing they are that they can be understood. If no one can read her word, there's no point, it isn't a word if she can't share it. But if a word is too much like the thing it is, then it's just that thing, and not a word at all. An egg is only an egg, but the word for egg is just a little bit different, just enough different that a Speaker would know it means egg, but not think that it's an egg.

But how can she make a word for a feeling? There is nothing there, nothing she can share with the others. There is no shape to nothing, no shape to feelings, unless it's the shape of her body hugging itself on the ground.

She squats again, pulls her arms around herself again, and thinks as hard as she can about the shape. Mother would hold her like this, but then there would be two bodies, and that isn't the same shape as when she holds herself. There are all the knobbly bits of her fingers and elbows and knees and feet, four of each, and her mouth at the top of her body. The bottom would be flat so it could sit and not topple over.

She can imagine the shape of the word in her gut, feel how she could make it. She lifts herself just enough off the ground and imagines the word as hard as she can, as solidly as she can. It takes shape in her gut, all knobbly bits and pointy at the top the way she imagined. It's hard to push it out, to say the word, but it should be hard. Words are hard, and the feeling she feels is hard, too.

She pants softly, pushing as hard as she can until the word lies sticky on the ground. She waits impatiently for it to harden, dancing around it with warm sharp full feelings, not at all like the emptiness, waving her arms and crying as loudly as she can. There is no one near enough to see her word, her new word, but she can see it more clearly as she cries louder.

It isn't quite what she imagined. She runs her fingers along all its surfaces, trying to feel which parts came out wrong. The center part which should be her body is hidden behind the knobs of her arms and legs; it doesn't seem like a person at all. The top is pointy, but maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe it should go in a little, so it is clear that's her mouth at the top. None of it says that she is holding herself; it's too short, too knobbly, not nearly spindly enough.

It isn't a word, she's sure. No one will understand it. The feelings turn empty again, sharp in a way this almost-word never will be. She turns it over and over in her fingers, feeling empty until the emptiness turns to hunger.

She shoves the word into her mouth, the hard shape quickly grinding into dust. She forgets herself in the empty feelings, forgets to drag her fingers through the bladegrass, forgets her name and remembers only the wanting for others until her feet turn her back toward town.

She follows the path back to town, silent as any of the Silent Ones who do not know words.

As she nears the town, there is something wrong. The wrongness seeps into the silence of no-words, wriggles around inside her until she realizes: she can't see. The town should be vivid with other voices, textures bright and full, but there is only the vaguest of shapes in front of her, only the sound of her own voice to bring it into focus. No one else is crying.

She takes a deep breath as she remembers. Bladegrass. Three-Streams-Town. Mother. She remembers herself, and the words, and the words the strangers brought with them. The Destroyer. Death.

Bladegrass walks forward, down the street that should have been her own. There is almost nothing she can see, and less she can recognize. Bits of houses, torn and burning, smoke she can taste, a person's leg. Torn. It makes no sense, makes the words waver inside her. She wants to forget. She wants to remember.

She begins to run her fingers over the edges of things, picking up pieces and shoving them into her mouth as quickly as she can chew them up. She wants to understand. There is so much burning, so many things sour with char, so much smoke and death. She can't find Mother. She can't find anyone she recognizes. There are no Speakers here.

She squats in the street and wails, overcome with the feelings, the feelings she has no words for. They are overwhelming, smothering like the smoke and dangerous like the fire. They are sharp like torn things, spindly like bodies carved apart and thrown aside.

They have a shape this time, a shape she can feel inside herself, waiting to come out. She stops crying, sits still in the darkness and waits for the shape that feels like these feelings, that will tell the strangers (and she will be a stranger now, in another town, with her sharp words and sharp feelings) how it feels to be destroyed.

So many edges, so many points. Uneven, because nothing here is even, everything is thrown about like puffseeds. Rough like blisters from the fire. Nothing flat; let it fall, roll, tumble uncertainly away from any other words. It is a lonely utterance, painful to say, and painful to read. She does not worry that no one will understand it this time. She will make it right, and she will take it with her, and all the Speakers will know. Everyone will know.

She sits alone in the blazing darkness and makes a new word for her people: _Grief_.


End file.
